


In Beta

by istie



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Cross-cultural, F/M, Language Barrier, Lost in Translation, Sex, Sexytimes, translator malfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 17:18:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istie/pseuds/istie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crew of the Normandy have their translator software updated ... and it all goes horribly awry.  They take the day off.  Set in ME3 somewhere, rated M for sexiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Beta

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following prompt:
> 
> "Assuming that all the alien races speak different languages and some sort of translator technology allows them all to communicate: the Normandy's translator equipment breaks, chaos ensues as no one can understand each other, even humans who speak different languages can no longer understand each other.
> 
> Bonus points for fem!Shep being in a relationship with Garrus and them having to learn to temporarily communicate without words."

“Commander, I must advise you that I will be installing an update to the Normandy crew’s omnitool translation program at 0300 hours tonight as per Council regulations.”

Shepard barely looked up from her terminal.  “Okay, EDI.  Thanks for letting me know.  Any big updates in this one?”

“No,” replied the AI.  “There are some new technological terms, particularly in scientific and archaeological fields.  There are also new colloquialisms in several turian dialects.  Beyond that, Commander, there are no large updates to the databases.”

“Alright.  Thanks again EDI.  I’m off for the night.  As always, wake me if you need me.  And make sure Joker actually takes a shift off.”

“Aye aye, Commander.”

The elevator doors hissed shut on the silent CIC, Specialist Traynor long since gone to bed. 

Shepard stood at-ease in the elevator as it quietly whisked her up to her quarters.  As the doors to her rooms swished open, she heard the unmistakable sound of Garrus Vakarian snoring.  She smiled briefly and locked the door behind her, slipping out of her uniform jacket as she went down the stairs. She snagged her pajama shorts off the end of the couch, exchanged them for her uniform pants, and collapsed into bed beside him, tossing her omnitool bracelet onto her nightstand.

“Ugh, you snore louder than a krogan with a cold…”  She levered Garrus over from his back onto his side and, soon thereafter, the snoring stopped. 

Shepard smiled, pulled the blankets up around her, and nestled close to her partner.

“I love you, Garrus Vakarian.”

\---

Shepard’s omnitool blared a ridiculously loud klaxon at 0600 every morning, without fail.  She always woke at 0559, giving her time to shut her alarm off before it made her cranky. 

This morning, after palming her discarded omnitool at 0559 before heading into the shower, it proceeded to go off at 0605, with a bloodcurdlingly-sweet rendition of “Morning Has Broken” complete with birdcalls and windchimes.  Garrus, who usually woke up at 0610, while Shepard was still in the shower, sat straight up in bed, his eyes wide open and his mandibles tight against his face. 

“What the hell…”  He leaned across the bed and grabbed the omnitool, smacking it to shut it up.  “Weird.”

A joke?  Shepard wasn’t usually the pranking type – that was Joker – but who knows, maybe she found it and thought it would be hilarious.  Ah well.  He put her omnitool back on the stand, then got up and dressed.

The sound of falling water stopped, and not long after, the bathroom door slid open to reveal Shepard, towel wrapped around her head, in her shorts and tank top.

Garrus spread his mandibles as she came down the stairs.  “Thought that was funny, did you?”

Shepard blinked at him, then crossed the room and grabbed her omnitool, putting it back on and tapping at it, looking at it strangely, then back at him.

Garrus thought she didn’t understand.  “The music, Shepard.  What was with the music?”

Another blank stare, accompanied by another poke at her omnitool. 

Then she opened her mouth.

\---

“What the hell is going on…”  Shepard muttered, poking at her omnitool.  “Garrus?”  She looked up.  He turned his head slightly, then tapped at his own omnitool.

“My translator says it’s working but I have no idea what you’re …”

\---

All he heard was liquid, alien sounds, the random fricatives sounding too harsh, out of place.  It was disquieting. 

All she heard was hissing and clicking, the vowels wavy and flanged.  It was bizarre.

But they’d both had first contact training, and were beyond excellent soldiers.  It took less than two minutes for them to resort to military hand signals … which they realized within ten seconds were useless for trying to speak normally.  Telling your partner to “stop”, “hold position”, “all clear”, “flank”, “take cover” … yeah … doesn’t work.

They blinked at each other.

\---

“EDI, what the hell is going on?”  Shepard looked at the ceiling, attempting to make it very clear to Garrus that she was talking to the ship.  She crossed her fingers.  Surely EDI could speak in any language she wanted …

“I am unsure as of yet, Commander.”  Alliance Standard, humanity’s galactic trade language.  Mostly English.  And, thank God, clear as a bell.

“It’s a good thing I can still understand _you_.  I was a bit nervous for a moment there.” 

“You need not be concerned, Commander.  I am able to communicate in every language currently known to galactic linguists, including a rudimentary form of hanar bioluminescence thanks to my mobile platform.”

“Well.”  Shepard couldn’t help it.  She was impressed.  “Hanar?”

“Yes.”

“Right.  Anyway.  What the fuck, EDI.  Why isn’t my translator working?  My omnitool says all-clear.”

“As I said, I am unsure as of yet, Shepard.  The Normandy is currently out of range of any communications and will not be back in range for twenty-four hours.  At that time I will be able to connect with galactic databases and determine the source of the translator problem.”

“Best guess?”

“I suspect that the update for the crew’s omnitools was either faulty or hacked.  Until I have a copy which is unaltered or updated, I will be unable to determine which.”

“Right.  So until then…”

“I believe the most fitting human phrase would be, ‘good luck.’”

“Thanks.”

Shepard looked back at Garrus, who looked up at her, pointed to his omnitool, pointed up at the ceiling, and shrugged.

Shepard smiled, and shrugged back.  It was going to be an interesting day …

\---

They’d started with getting breakfast.  It had sufficed to point at their omnitools to anyone else up and moving, and everyone nodded understandingly and pointed at their own.  It was shipwide, clearly.

It made breakfast rather quiet, actually, though Shepard sat down with a bowl of high-fibre Cheerios (they never did die) covered in yogurt and fruit and struck up a conversation with Ashley, who spoke Standard about as well as she herself did.  Shepard had learned Standard in school as everyone else had, but you never needed it in the Alliance, since you always got the best omnitool translator tech – you never knew when you’d need the nuances of an alien language. 

Shepard spoke Calgary English, an amalgamate of a few dialects from the Western Plains as well as some vowel-stretching influence from the Northern stretches of the United North American States.  Ash spoke Colonial English, which was a bit rougher around the edges but similar to Mid-Western Atlantic English, which was perfectly compatible with Calgary … but they stuck mostly to Standard, all the same.  It was comfy to Shepard; felt like being back in boot camp.  She’d slipped back into Calgary after Alchera, needing a bit of home, so her Standard was a bit out of shape, but they managed.

Garrus, of course, was silent.  Shepard had no idea what he was eating: it looked a bit like spaghetti with blackberries.  She was very thankful for a moment that they’d taken the side trip to the Citadel docks to get some fresh food; it meant that they all had something to think about apart from the fact that they couldn’t communicate with half the crew.

Other crew members slipped in, said hello in Standard, grabbed a bite to eat and then left.  After discussing with Ashley, Shepard decided that there was really only one way to play this, and she excused herself from the table, signed to Garrus that she was going to talk to Joker, and headed to the cockpit.

“Hey, Commander.”  Joker’s Standard was always tinged with the Tiptree accent, just barely.  He’d spent most of his life in Alliance schools, so he’d lost the colonial influence fast. 

“Hi Joker.” 

He laughed.  “Oh man, I forgot you sounded like a Mid-Canadian.”

She smacked him in the shoulder.  “Nothing wrong with that.”

He held up his hands.  “No, Commander, hell no.  It’s just funny.  Now what can I do for you?”

“How’s our survey run going?”

“Just fine.  Honestly, we don’t have anything to worry about out here.  We are literally just scanning these asteroids on our way through to Noveria to drop off the… well you know, the thing.”

“Rhetorical question.”

“Shoot.”

“Could the ship function for a day if we all just took the day off?”

Joker laughed out loud.  “I’m glad you called that a rhetorical question, Commander.  EDI can handle anything, and these asteroids are so far apart and uninhabited that I don’t even need to knock on wood to unjinx that one.”

Shepard smiled.  “Tell EDI to relay the message to the crew: they get a break until we can update the omnitools.  I know we could probably get some work done in our varying levels of Standard, but I think we deserve a break after last week’s fiasco.”

“Agreed, Commander.  Have fun with Garrus.” 

Shepard smacked him again.

\---

When Shepard reached her room, Garrus was sitting at her extranet terminal, scrolling through gun schematics. Shepard peered over his shoulder and shook her head at the unintelligible scribbles he’d marked in the margins. Her ocular implants had been linked to her omnitool – usually she could read other written languages, even if it didn’t always parse correctly into English.

He reached up with one hand and ran his talons through her hair, saying something which managed to sound like a cross between a growl, a hiss, and the sexiest purr she’d ever heard some out of his mouth.

Or maybe she was biased.

But either way, the sound shot straight down her body and an aching warmth began to pool between her legs. She’d somehow thought this would take longer – that Garrus would use the day off to do just that (take a day off, maybe read, work out, take a couple hours to work on the Thanix without having to write a report), but she … probably should have known better.

He spun the chair around and pulled her into his lap.

She _really_ should have known better. He was no fool. He knew _exactly_ what “day off” meant …

\---

Garrus cradled Shepard in his arms, leaning forward and pressing his face into her chest, rumbling as deeply as he could.

He had indeed known exactlywhat “day off” meant, and the gun schematics had been nothing more than a convenient distraction. If she had gotten up to her quarters to find him already naked, then she would have had the advantage. And it was fun when Shepard had the advantage, sure …

But this way, he’d thrown her off guard. And it was _his_ turn to have some fun.

He tilted his head up and licked her neck just slightly. She squirmed; he could feel her heartbeat racing already. It was almost too easy.

He slid his hands along the edge of her shirt, gently pulling at the carefully-tucked creases. Once he had gained entry, he slipped his hands under the fabric and scratched gently at her warm flesh. He could feel tiny bumps raising all along her back, and he purred again. She shuddered slightly and he pulled the top off in one smooth motion, tossing the shirt to the side as he stood up, lifting Shepard off the ground.

\---

Holy shit, did she love it when he did this.

And he knew it. He knew how this worked. If she hadn’t been in the mood, she would have pulled away, or shaken her head, or just said no – she was pretty sure he could have figured that word out – they were good with each other.

Plus he could probably smell the pheromones in which she was sure she was positively drenched.

So when he’d lifted her, she’d lowered her hands and slipped the waistband of her uniform pants over her hips. Now she was shimmying out of them, and they fell to the floor, and she shivered. It wasn’t exactly _warm_ on the Normandy …

Garrus stepped forward, over the discarded clothing, and the bathroom door slid open. Shepard blinked, not having expected the noise, and Garrus’ mandibles cracked into the widest smile she’d seen in weeks. He put his head close to hers and slipped his tongue out from those grinning mandibles to lick her lips.

She shuddered again. He was really, really good at this.

He put her down just over the threshold of the bathroom and stepped back, just outside – not far enough for the door to close. He put his arms over his head and tugged at the sleeves of his shirt, twisting slightly to pull the fabric over his cowl. She gazed at him for a moment, waiting for the shirt to hit the floor, then reached forward, eager to help, wanting to run her fingers over his gorgeous gray flesh …

But he looked at her, and stopped her in mid-reach.

Oh. _Oh_.

_That_ was how he wanted to play it.

Well alright then, Vakarian.

She could enjoy a show.

\---

Garrus inhaled slowly, enjoying the way he could feel Shepard’s gaze travel over his plates. He slowly undid his belt buckle (very slowly … so slowly … her eyes were like a beam of fire. She knew he was pausing there. Right there. Yes, Shepard, that’s what you want, isn’t it … ), then pulled the belt from its loops one loop at a time.

He turned around, pivoting one foot at a time, showing her his back as he lifted one leg to the chair, leaning over and undoing his boot, then taking it off, setting it aside, lifting the other leg, undoing the straps, pulling it off, setting it aside …

Not much left now. For all the times he’d watched strippers, this was harder than it looked.

Though as he turned back around, the look on Shepard’s face was more than enough to tell him he was probably doing it right.

He caught her gaze, deftly removing his pants – just underarmour left now … but that could wait … let her wait.

He dropped to his knees in front of her, talons catching her Alliance-standard blue underwear – the most boring pair she had, he was sure, and pulling them down just the slightest bit …

He ducked his head forward and ran his tongue along her inner thigh. She bucked, the slightest moan escaping her lips. Mm hmm. Yep. There we go.

He raised himself to his feet, backing her up against the wall. She shivered as her bare skin touched the cold metal, and he pulled the fabric of one bra cup down enough to expose the taut, erect nipple to the cool air. He then slid one hand up to her shoulder, and pulled the strap down to her elbow.

Her eyes were still locked onto his as he palmed her exposed breast, his thumb grazing her nipple lightly. She bucked again, and her eyes unfocused for a moment. He slipped his other hand behind her back and unbuckled the bra deftly, removing it with the hand which had just been on her breast …

You could almost see her deflate with disappointment. He fought back a smirk. Oh, Shepard.

He tossed the bra out the still-open door and dropped to his knees again, catching the last remaining bit of fabric on his way down and pulling it down to her ankles with the momentum of his descent. He plunged his tongue into the folds of her skin without any warning, enjoying the way she pressed herself back against the wall, her arms flying out to her sides, trying to grasp the wall for any sort of hold whatsoever as he tongued her clitoris, swirling the tip of his tongue around it, pressing gently into the skin just beside it, then abandoning it entirely to slide his tongue along her labia, flicking at her entrance.

His plates had shifted long ago, his military-grade underarmour the only thing keeping Shepard from knowing just how much he really wanted to drive other things into her besides his tongue. But now it was getting to be a bit painful and a bit distracting, and he stood up, stepping away from his mate, who looked back at him with a mix of confusion and longing, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

And then he pulled his underarmour off, one leg at a time, and he quite literally sprung to attention … and so did Shepard, her eyes lighting up and focusing on him again.

He gathered the last bits of clothing in one hand and tossed them out the door, then stepped forward, letting the door swish shut behind him. He palmed the water controls with one hand as the other slid up Shepard’s neck and into her hair, the hot water cascading down his back and raining onto her.

\---

Shepard couldn’t quite see Garrus clearly through the water, but she could sure feel him. He was pressed up against her and she was pressed against the wall; he had one arm up around her and that hand was twirled in her now-soaked hair; his other hand was trailing up her side, his talons tracing her ribs. She shivered. He kissed her.

His tongue slipped between her lips and her eyes closed, her hands sliding up along his sides, one returning back to his waist where she pressed softly and felt him roll against her, his insistent erection slipping in between her thighs. She traced the edges of his plates with her other hand all the way up past his cowl to the back of his head, then scratched at the base of his fringe oh-so-softly, feeling rather than hearing the deep growl rising from his chest as she sped up her scratching, every once in a while sliding her fingers back through his fringe before coming back to the sensitive skin at the base. The growl slowly got louder until she could swear her teeth were rattling. He murmured something in her ear, and she pulled back to look at him. That hadn’t _sounded_ like he wanted her to stop …

He lowered his head to her neck and licked her skin, shifting the hand in her hair to grip the back of her head; he then bit down gently just as—

He entered her in one smooth motion, and she gasped, her eyes rolling back, her hand tightening on the back of his head in turn as he slid all the way in, deeper than most of the men she’d ever had sex with – and the oh-so-pleasantly-alien feel and shape of his cock felt _so_ good in her, always, no matter how many times they made love. The water rained down on them, and he held her there for a couple seconds, the arm around her waist holding her weight up against the wall as she relaxed around him.

He shifted slightly, pushing her up on the wall a little higher, then let go of her head and picked her legs up one by one, hooking them around his waist with her help. He then took hold of her head again, and began to move back and forth, slowly at first, pumping his cock in and out of her, gradually getting faster and more powerful in his thrusts.

“Oh _Garrus_ …” she moaned.

\---

Garrus smiled, listening to her alien-sounding moans as he drove into her, revelling in the sounds she made when he thrust particularly hard (a gasped intake of breath, a slow moan on the exhalation) and the ones she made when he was slow and gentle (a slow crescendo and decrescendo of sound with her lips closed). She was _noisy_ , his Shepard. He was quiet unless she really got him going (well, that was always; maybe he should re-evaluate his own noise level), but she couldn’t stop making sounds. He liked it: it seemed to him a bit like subvocals.

She was starting to get a little more high-pitched. Good. He slid into her a little deeper, his thrusts becoming shorter as he repositioned himself to support her with his hips as he let go of her head, bringing his hand down to press the flat side of a talon against her clitoris.

_Ah_. Yes, that sound was particularly good. In and out, around and around …

Her hands hadn’t left his fringe and waist, but had paused momentarily; now she started moving them around, pressing and scratching, and it was all he could do to stay focused enough to keep his talon moving against her clit. His thrusts became slightly erratic, and his breathing became sharper, his eyes closing as he lost himself in the rhythm of sex, his growling rumbles mixing with her breathy cries and moans.

“Ah, _fuck_ …” she breathed.

He smiled again. _That_ word he knew.

He obliged.

\---

Shepard basked in the warmth of afterglow as she lay beside her lanky turian mate, wet hair spread across the pillow, one arm thrown across the bed, the other resting on her waist. Garrus was tracing patterns on her skin, sitting beside her; the both of them were still completely nude. She watched him from below, smiling: his eyes were intent on her, his talons carving patterns through the remaining water droplets.

His mandibles twitched. She recognized the frown and tilted her head, raising her hand and tapping his forehead. _What are you thinking?_

He looked over at her, then pointed to where he’d been tracing. She raised herself on her elbows and looked down, but couldn’t see what he meant: there were faint red marks on her skin from his talons, but nothing more. She looked up at him again and raised an eyebrow.

He looked away, then looked back, and said something that went from a hiss to a click through several vowels that sounded a bit like “ah”, “eh” and “oh” …

She shook her head.

He looked at the ceiling, then looked back at her, casting his eyes over her. Then his brow plates lifted, and he snatched a lock of wet hair, squeezing it, then touching his talons to her skin , drawing lines with the droplets he’d gathered.

_Oh_! She was drying off and he still wanted to draw on her.

She laughed and sat up. He moved back slightly, taking his hands off her. She drew imaginary lines with her fingers. He nodded. She traced the markings on his face, then pointed to herself again.

It took him a minute, but… He drew back, inhaling in the nearly-universal expression of _oh I get it now_ , then got up and went back to the washroom. He returned seconds thereafter with a medium-sized jar of blue paint. His markings were permanent, but of course faded with time, and most turians got them professionally redone at least once a decade. More prominent figures could get them done every year; most turians just kept a jar of paint on hand if they needed to touch up for a special occasion in between re-markings.

He sat down on the bed again, and pushed her back down slightly. She laid back down and watched him, still smiling. He cracked the jar open and dipped a talon in, then proceeded to begin tracing patterns all over again.

She relaxed and closed her eyes, letting her mate be creative all over her. This wasn’t a side of Garrus she saw often: he’d mentioned dabbling in painting a couple times, but never very seriously – she’d figured it was something he’d enjoyed doing while young but hadn’t care enough about to pursue as a hobby.

She opened her eyes again when she felt him kiss her, and heard unfamiliar words in her ear.

_Take a look,_ perhaps? She saw his eyes hovering over her face, and began to sit up, but his hand covered her eyes before she could get a look at herself. He helped her off the bed, then when she was standing, he put a hand firmly on her shoulder. _Don’t move._ Okay, she could do that …

He started drawing again, on her back this time. He _was_ going all-out, wasn’t he.

Her back took less time, she thought, and she kept her eyes closed as he led her up the stairs and back into the bathroom. He tapped near her eyes, and she understood the signal and opened them.

She saw herself in the mirror and her jaw dropped.

She was covered in navy; swirls and straight lines, great interlocking curves over her breasts, sharp square angles slicing over her hipbones and under her ribs. She turned and looked over her shoulder to see long lines down her back, long curves arcing off the lines to link up with the intricate patterns on her front. Her legs were similarly covered, and she could see several lines of dots running up the length of her calves before turning into dashes and then into the long lines covering her torso. She lifted her hands and examined them: they were covered in the most intricate patterns yet, the lines getting thinner and sharper until they reached her fingertips. It was almost like henna, but thoroughly _alien_ : she felt like something out of an anthropology book.

She looked in the mirror again, and took a good look at her face. She stepped closer, raising a hand to the mirror (she didn’t dare touch her face lest it smudge), tracing the bold, thick lines that she knew _way_ too well across her nose and cheekbones and along her jaw. They weren’t as simple as Garrus’: the rest of her face was decorated, too, with more angles and curves.

She caught Garrus’ eye in the mirror. He was standing behind and to the side of her, looking very nervous, his hands tight together.

She stepped back and smiled at him, holding his gaze in the glass. “It’s beautiful, Garrus.”

He tilted his head. He knew his name, surely, but of course he didn’t understand the rest of it. Um…

She grinned and left the bathroom. He followed a couple steps behind her. She caught up the jar of paint from the bedside table, and dipped the tip of her pointer finger in it, then grabbed his arm and drew the most rudimentary sign she could think of:

A smiley face.

He laughed, and his mandibles spread wide in a huge grin.

She grinned back, then looked back at herself, raising her arms in front of her, gazing at the patterns.

“I wish you could tell me if they meant something,” she said softly.

She heard a chuckle.

“Of course they do, Shepard.”

She looked over at him, and he looked at her.

EDI’s voice came over the comm. “I have fixed the issue with our translation programs, Commander. It appears we downloaded a faulty version. I would recommend you speak with Lieutenant Moreau at your earliest convenience.”

She snickered. “Thanks, EDI. Will do.”

“Commander.”

A moment of silence.

“So what do they mean?”

He stepped closer, and began pointing out different patterns. “This one is longevity, and when it connects to this one, it means prosperity…”


End file.
